If Wagner and Wilson are back, they're going to be Michigan's primary scorers. If one or both leave, Simmons will help fill the scoring void—Beilein isn't going to run his offense through Jon Teske/Austin Davis and Duncan Robinson.

I like his game, but if Wilson and Wagner come back, it's hard to find many minutes out there for him. I could take a few off Wilson and give Livers spot minutes, but Beilein tends to play a tight rotation and Duncan Robinson is going to command plenty of minutes at the four. It's not a commentary on Livers, just how the roster shakes out at the moment. Quibbling over a few minutes here or there kinda misses the purpose of the post anyway.

Here's what I have planned. These are all separate lists and players can be on multiple teams (I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying Burke is both a First-Team PG and the Small Ball PG):

First Team/Second Team (with either a third team or honorable mentions for the Darius lovers)
Small Ball Lineup
Kentucky-Style Giant Lineup
Pure Shooting
Defense
All-Senior
All-Freshman
Bench Mob
Bench

They're all eligible. The lists/posts are separate. 2013 McGary can (and very well might) make the All-Beilein first team despite being a bench player. There will also be posts for the best small-ball/freshman/defense lineups, and so on.

It does mean 2017 Walton and 2013 Burke can't both be first-team All-Beilein players because they're both point guards. I'm not entirely sure what's silly about that.

They've taken some really athletic large corners. St-Juste posted a shuttle time that would've been a good one at the NFL combine, and Sims isn't too far off. These guys may not be quite as twitchy as Lewis but their size gives them a lot more room for error; Stribling was darn near as good as Lewis in coverage last year and he was a three-star camp pickup out of high school.

EDIT: I should add that Ambry Thomas is a ridiculous athlete. They're taking a good combination of Lewis types and Stribling types.

This staff developed Channing Stribling, moved Jeremy Clark to corner, and brought in Benjamin St-Juste and J'Marick Woods (both 6'3") for the 2017 class. They'll still take smaller, talented players like Ambry Thomas (who's lanky for a 5'11" corner) and Jaylen Kelly-Powell, but they notably passed on an Army All-American in-state corner last cycle in Cass Tech's Donovan Johnson, who showed excellent cover skills but was smaller than this staff's ideal at 5'10".

The nice thing about these bigger corners is they can easily be safeties if they're not quite fluid enough to be great in man coverage at the college level. The coaches seem to be approaching it like they do with linemen: take a healthy number and sort out the position specifics later.

...is literally identical to Stauskas' on a similar number of attempts, and while he got off to a slow start (by his standards) this year, he's been around 45% on threes since Big Ten play began. Don't let a couple missed free throws throw off your perception of his work on the whole, especially since he's become a much better all-around player this year, especially on defense.

He has issues when he drives and there's a help defender waiting in the lane. He's been picking his spots and driving when he just has one man to beat to get to the rim. I certainly have no issue with him taking layups—we have a few other pictures from last weekend that are eerily similar the one in this post where Irvin is putting the ball on the backboard with little resistance.

the server issues have largely been solved. (/knocks on wood.) We've done multiple upgrades, including a relatively recent one, as well as adding Cloudflare. The primary reason we got rid of the HD app is it was putting an enormous strain on the server, far more than it should've for the amount of traffic it was generating.

The NSD outage was a bit of really bad luck. Our database got corrupted (an issue totally unrelated to the server), and while it was something that could've been fixed pretty quickly, it happened to occur just as we'd arrived at the Bo Store to record the live podcast—we restored a backup from the previous day and reposted that day's posts when the podcast wrapped up. The server had actually been on a roll—I had no trouble posting Solomon's Hello post.

was my reasoning. A victory over a fellow bubble team doesn't do nearly as much for tourney hopes as other bubble teams falling by the wayside. Marquette and VT being on just the right side of the bubble instead of just the wrong side won't have a significant impact on M's tourney resume, especially since M will pick up another quality win or two down the stretch if they're going to have the resume needed to make the field in the first place.

I went through every post touch by Bryant last night. Double-teams were frequent but not constant, which I mentioned, and you posted a particularly misleading stat: while he was 3-for-8 from the field, he was 0-for-4 on three-pointers, which have nothing to do with the subject at hand (especially as it relates to Happ).

Davis did score almost at will. Incidentally, he got a number of touches against Donnal, and a couple of his buckets came when he was on the floor at the same time as Bryant.

I appreciate the response; nothing you said jumped out to me from what I saw. There was just too much stuff on the borderline in those threads to sift through individual comments after a while. BiSB actually got to one thread before I did and cleared out the worst comments; there was still plenty that, at the very least, could be construed as making light of the issue. In this case, I'd rather err on the side of caution than not.

...related to the sexual assault allegations at MSU. The original posts themselves are fine—what is happening in East Lansing is newsworthy. Many of the responses were not okay, however. Sexual assault is not a joking matter, and this is not fodder for rivalry trolling. There's plenty of source material for that elsewhere (see: Tuesday night) without making light of a very serious situation.

I try to cover the whole rotation, but sometimes I won't get to everyone. Going over the current top eight is my main priority. Plus, McQuaid is really struggling; it's not like I skipped over a vital bench scorer.

Perhaps we should take a 28-point, six-offensive-rebound, six-assist effort as a sign Beilein is utiliing him how he should be utilized. Not calling plays specifically with him in mind doesn't mean Michigan isn't running sets in which he's involved; there aren't many (any?) plays in Beilein's playbook designed to end only one way. Unless you want the ball in Wilson's hands at the end of the shot clock, I'm not sure what more you could want here.

If Michigan is running their offense through Wilson, he's not there to get those six offensive rebounds, which is how he got a good chunk of those points. The rest came within the flow of the offense, which is ideal. He's a player who functions best that way; you don't want to run a bunch of Wilson post-ups or isos—he's not a guy who's going to take a defender off the bounce and he doesn't have a refined post-up game yet (not to mention post-ups are just about the least-efficient play you can call).

It's a good thing that a player is able to produce so much without being the focal point of the offense. Criticizing Beilein for how he handles Wilson after that performance is quite the feat of Beilein-bashing.

I have no intention of belitting the importance of DIB's commitment. The second half of the post is testament to that, I hope.

I can't think too much about the possible reaction of the subjects of most of the posts I write; if I did, it would be much more difficult to provide as fair and complete analysis as I hope I put out there for football, hoops, and recruiting. I'm quite aware there are some active players who read this site. For the most part I try not to think about it.

My intention with the introduction wasn't so much SpartyFreude, though I certainly don't mind that (I realize I tagged this with 'lolsparty'), but to call out the type of reporting on display in SpartanTailgate's coverage of Irving-Bey. To be frank, I found it dishonest and unfair to the kid, and I thought that was worth discussing. I don't think it's right to post that stuff behind a paywall when it's obvious the recruit is going elsewhere; at best, it comes off as sour grapes. That's the type of stuff that most often finds its way back to recruits—a writer from a credentialed outlet saying the player is overrated/not very good/not a take/etc.

I had a little fun with how I went about it, sure. I've been cranking out these posts; I finished Ruiz's right about the moment he went public, saw that DIB's announcement would be at four, and got this one put together in a few hours. I wouldn't try to diminish anyone's commitment to Michigan. I understand your concern; I'd hope the recruit would see it the way I do, but that can't be at the very forefront of my mind if I'm going to do this job very well.

The Michigan game was UCLA's slowest of the season by five full possessions (64; they average 75). UCLA scored a season high 1.59 points per possession on Saturday night. Their next-best output this season was 1.49 PPP against Pacific, which has the #171 defense in the country.

There's no way to sugercoat this defensive performance even when accounting for UCLA's firepower.

Meanwhile, Wagner has a 15.9 to 10.5 edge in defensive rebound rate and doubles Donnal's block and steal rates (4.6 to 2.3 and 2.6 to 1.3, respectively).

The only real edges Donnal has over Wagner statistically right now are offensive rebounds and turnovers, and I find it very hard to argue that Donnal is the more effective offensive player despite those stats.

The reasoning here and Martin setting up an official to Notre Dame led to the Crystal Ball change. With the number of players still on the board there are going to be some targets whose timelines determine whether they'll have a spot in the class more than their interest; Martin could be one of those guys.

Unfortunately, even if I go in and manually edit the embed code, there's no way to turn off autoplay for gfycats. I realize it can be distracting, but there is the pause button, and they're so much better than regular gifs that I'm going to stick with these. Might not use so many in future non-OFAAT posts. Still getting used to these.

I told him Troy Williams is a great example, what Troy was able to do just cutting and slashing to the basket without the ball, and use your length.

That is precisely how GRIII was used in this offense. Also, limited sample size, but Wilson hit 30% of his threes last year—he's not particularly reliable from the outside, but like GRIII, he has the range to hit the occasional three.

In a quick montage, ESPN showed a replay angle in which it sure looked to me like Bush led with his helmet. Intricacies of the rule aside, though, it was at best a borderline hit, and I'm not big on celebrating those, especially if they result in injury—and even though MSU didn't run a full test, it was pretty apparent that Frey was concussed from the hit.

The main criteria is whether something is useful. In this particular case I also wanted to expand my scope: I've watched several MSU games this year already, including Wisconsin, but hadn't had a chance to watch all of the BYU game—a lot of what's in the post is informed by all the MSU games I've watched, Wisconsin included.

Another reason I chose this game: watching an offense against a very good defense, even when it's the best comp to Michigan's, has its downsides—especially when it's a subpar offense, it can be hard to tell whether a player isn't good or they're just getting overwhelmed by a very good opponent or a bad performance from a teammate is masking their performance and so on. I'm also pretty familiar with BYU's personnel because Michigan played them last year. Watching this game let me get a better sense of MSU's players than watching them get overwhelmed by Wisconsin.

I'll be using the Wisconsin film (and maybe a quick rewatch of the Maryland game to cover personnel changes) to do the post on MSU's defense, since Wisconsin's offense fits the criteria nicely—I know their personnel, they're pretty average, and their style is similar to Michigan's.

He was mentioned as a potential replacement for Hester when Hampton's status was up in the air, but he's only played 13 snaps this year and would be moving from cornerback. Unless Hampton is too far from 100% to play the whole game, he should be the guy—and, as noted, RU doesn't rotate in the secondary much at all.

I pulled the first thread because posting injury speculation with zero evidence there's an injury is a great way to get people really pissed at you.

Posting the same thread again, getting angry with the response, changing the thread title but not the content, and calling the board "nazis" for being justifiably upset about injury speculation is, uh, not the way to bounce back from that.

That's a mesh concept (see the Air Raid section here). Perry and the TE (can't tell who from the video) are running drag routes going in the other direction, which is a way to pick off defenders in man coverage. No receivers are blocking downfield, unlike the Colorado play. Colorado's play is a true screen; there's really only one receiver in a route unless you include the guy going deep to run a defender out of the play. The play above has multiple reads, though Darboh is the primary receiver.

...this is absolutely doing something about it. I've dealt with similar mental health issues and found this article to be not only inspiring, but very informative.

I'd request that before people rush to post something on this, they actually take the time to examine it. This is a very important and sensitive issue that affects a ton of people; dismissing this as "raising awareness and doing nothing about it" misses the mark by a lot.

When doing original, thoughtful reporting like this, absolutely. The B/R stuff we didn't want appearing on the blog was their clickbait slideshow crap and the like; this is in a completely different category.

I happen to strongly disagree with your interpretation of Johnson's comments; it can mean something as innocuous as him and Partridge not having much contact. Even if it were correct, there's zero need to take shots at a high school kid on his way out. Be better than that; your comment has no place here.

...to compare. Hawaii at least played a Power 5 team their first week. I think UCF has better athletes and a slightly higher talent level, but they're changing systems on both sides of the ball and it showed even against a FCS squad.

...in the chart, but his criteria for that is a player who's projected to be a potential first-round pick or very close to it. Wormley fits that right now; Glasgow is every bit as good, if not better, as a college player, but at least right now his draft stock isn't as high.

ESPN "writer" saying Michigan not for real (yet). Where do they get these people?

This definitely didn't need to be a thread in the first place; the premise that Michigan hasn't won big games yet this year is rather hard to argue. Worse, however, were the misogynistic, derogatory comments towards the author. Cut that BS out or accounts are going to disappear.

I'll make myself crystal clear since it's apparently necessary for many of you: whether or not you agree with the article, the author's gender and appearance have absolutely nothing to do with the conversation. Stooping to that level is unoriginal, unfunny, and most of all insulting. Consider this a final warning before I start blocking accounts at the first sight of this kind of stuff. If you think your comment even approaches being borderline, keep it to yourself, and maybe take some time to consider how you relate to women.

But the first three were all the same person (honestly don't remember who). About as stark an example of "please write my article for me" that I've encountered—I had to suppress laughter because Mattison kept cutting off his non-questions once that became obvious.

If an opposing coach needed to comb through pressers to get hints about what they're up against, they're probably not qualified to coach. There's very little these coaches reveal from a strategy standpoint that wouldn't be very obvious to anyone who's watched tape.

If you're posting an opinion from a columnist/talking head and note at the end of the post that there are multiple posts on this site about how said person's opinion isn't worth listening to, it's almost certainly not worth starting that thread. That goes double when the opinion is something that's been discussed ad nauseam ever since Harbaugh got here.

Pulled this thread. Hudson isn't starting (it's still Hill and Thomas), but the OP got confused because another site misinterpreted one of Chris Partridge's media day quotes. Trust me, if Hudson is a starter, this site will be all over it.

To give some context: we had half an hour for player interviews, which were split between two different rooms (offense and defense), and there were fewer players available than any other year I've been covering the team. Was tough to get any one-on-one time, especially with the defense. Adam and I did our best to get around to a number of different players without sacrificing the depth of the interviews, but it's a tough balancing act. I bailed on the Jabrill Peppers scrum after about a minute because it was going to be near-impossible to get decent, non-repetitive questions in.

The thread concept was fine. The responses—not so much. The creepy objectification of women and casual misogyny that is far too common everywhere is also far too common here. I plan to be more active in pulling threads/posts that cross the line in the future. To be blunt, I find it pathetic that many here can't seem to handle any conversation involving young women without it veering into this territory, and it's the thing that bothers me most about our (generally great) board.

I use the cloudy option every one in a while, but usually as a last resort—it's the one way to guarantee you won't get any points from a pick. In Bolds's case, Rutgers has made him a major priority in their class—I should've clarified that there was a reason to pick them instead of just go cloudy. We're not just selecting random teams for the "Not Michigan" picks.

I'd say 29/32 is pretty good on the accuracy side of things. We're still way more conservative about putting picks out there than most—some guys have hundreds of picks in—and when we get new info, we're usually pretty quick to change the more speculative picks (like Hippenhammer recently).

...that I'm not sure it's quite that structured, but that's the general approach—they have a number in mind at each position and a handful of guys who are takes no matter what. Michigan has a little more wiggle room regarding their position-specific needs than most schools since they go after so many multi-position "athletes" too.

At this point I think they've narrowed their focus to the top-tier guys on their board. Bateman may be a three-star but he's got a ton of upside—dude is 6'8" with quick feet and little in way of bad weight, he just needs (quite a bit of) technique work.

If Bateman commits, that leaves one or two spots open for more OL, and I think that will work out. Michigan isn't a lock for any of the guys you mentioned. They're head-to-head with Bama for Wilson, Leatherwood, and Ruiz (with Oklahoma also on top for him), Banks and Bainivalu are west coast guys with top-tier Pac-12 squads in hot pursuit, and Slaton has Clemson and SEC schools after him and keeps saying he wants to play hoops in college (which, if you've seen his hoops film, you know is unrealistic at best at a program like Michigan's).

Bird in the hand and all that... between potential in-class attrition, the quality of the guys they already have in the class—I think both Honigford and Stueber were excellent pickups—and there being no guarantee they can reel in all the high-level guys they're after, I think the coaches are approaching this the right way.

...to re-watch every play from every game. It's well-documented around here that Smith's vision has been an issue. He's especially prone to missing the backside cut inside zone (like this), and even his best runs have often featured him missing the inital hole (famously on the long TD against BYU, also on this Indiana run).

Also, I've noticed many of the same things Brian has about your comments, so I feel compelled to point this out: Grant Newsome played some snaps as a sixth OL (giant TE) last year. He didn't play "significant snaps" as an offensive tackle.

The Smith theory makes sense because we've literally seen him miss holes with our very own eyes on too many occasions to dismiss. To suggest otherwise is to ignore quite a bit of evidence.

If (*if*) that was the case, it's a terrible precedent for a coach to set, both for the present (you're bringing in a player who thinks he's entitled to a starting spot) and for the future (if that doesn't work out, you have no Plan B).

Harbaugh would balk at that demand in an instant, and he'd be right for doing so, even with a high-level in-state prospect.

...going around, but nothing from the most reliable sources. (I'm not sure how many times it needs to be reiterated that BlueVod is NOT a legit source, but here we are again.) Not ruling out a commit, but not in "buckle up" mode, either.

That's all that showed up in their database. I should look for another way to find that info. The redesign screwed up so, so much on that site. Couldn't include a couple articles in the Malone-Hatcher commitment post because the redesign rendered them completely unreadable.

It's the offseason. I also just wrapped up writing ~15,000 words of opponent previews for HTTV over the last few weeks. I'm not going to apologize for coming up with a series of posts that don't require me to write too much, especially when the response has been overwhelmingly positive. There are plenty of other posts to read—for free!—if you don't like these.

Peoples-Jones hasn't sought out much attention at all given his high profile, and the only time he bucked that trend was to speak out against the satellite camp ban—not because it served his best interests, but because it could help out lesser-known prospects.

Taking the time to evaluate all available options doesn't make one a diva. Blanket characterizations of high school kids really, really bother me.

Evan Smotrycz played quite a bit as a 6'8" stretch four before he transferred; he also played the five but he would've been a four long-term had he stuck around.

At West Virginia, Beilein played 6'8" Joe Alexander at the four, and I believe he had taller fours in general at WVU, but KenPom doesn't list heights/weights for his pre-2007 teams.

Just because Beilein has played shorter players at the four here doesn't mean he doesn't want bigger guys there. Note that, as mentioned in this post, he wants to play DJ Wilson on the wing. There are good reasons to believe Peters won't end up here, but it won't be because he isn't a fit.

Robinson, MAAR, Dawkins, and Donnal all had impressively low turnover rates. Also, Michigan may have been sixth nationally, but they were fifth in Big Ten play—they didn't do as good a job taking care of the ball against quality opponents. I'm not trying to lampoon Irvin for no reason here; it's a part of his game that needs work.

Even if Zak's turnover rate was objectively bad (it seems our sources disagree here)you still have to consider the context. -- It is as a massive improvement for him, he did it coming off a major back injury, and he did it without having anywhere close to the caliber of teammates that these guys had.

I'm done using my time on this. In the final five games you cited below, Irvin went 7/33 on three-pointers. The point of that section in my post was that Irvin and Walton couldn't put it all together this year; for Irvin, a major part of that was the turnovers—which I think I've shown were an issue as teams adjusted to his new style of play—and another major part was him losing his jumper.

Out of the seven games in conference+tourney play in which Irvin dished out four or more assists, he had three or more turnovers in four of them—the exceptions were Rutgers, Nebraska, and the Notre Dame game in which he shot 4/16. When he got more assertive, he struggled to take care of the ball. I'm not sure why this is so hard to accept since it was quite obvious when watching him play.

Yes, Irvin got thrown into a tough situation when LeVert went down and he was tasked with generating more offense. Yes, there were encouraging signs from his play. But take off the maize-colored glasses; he posted an O-Rating below 100 and context only covers for so much of that. Michigan needed him to be a viable #1 option and he wasn't that most of the time.

...when you keep moving the goalposts. I'm using KenPom, the standard-bearer for college hoops stats. Irvin's turnovers were an issue, increasingly so as opponents adjusted to way he expanded his game, and while he deserves a lot of credit for said expansion, an objective analysis of the team still requires looking at the flaws—turnovers were a flaw, and in conjunction with his shooting numbers an especially troublesome one.

To then turn around and say Robinson's very reasonable turnover rate is "unacceptable" doesn't make any sense to me. Plus, context is important here: Irvin is heading into his final season at Michigan and he's played a major role for three years; Robinson just played his first year of game action against D-I competition. The expectations for them in 15-16 were different for good reason.

First of all, Irvin's season-long turnover rate was 15%, not 13%, a difference that's far from unsubstantial. I like to look at conference-only numbers since they eliminate a lot of the variation you get from quality of non-conference schedule. Looking at the players you brought up:

I agree that Irvin improved quite a bit as a shot-creator this year, but his turnovers are an issue, and that became apparent down the stretch as opponents looked to pickpocket his too-high dribble or cut off his baseline kickouts. He had 20 turnovers in the last five conference games; four of those were losses. Plus, his shooting numbers this year were way worse than those of the other players mentioned.

I'm encouraged by many aspects of Irvin's play, but to say his turnovers are acceptable is to overlook both the numbers and what was quite apparent simply from watching the team play down the stretch.

Usually they're up to date, but even if that figure isn't exactly correct—and especially if he's grown a couple inches—the point still stands. He's going to need to add a lot of muscle once he gets on campus to the point that it's probably best if he redshirts.

...confuses me. Forbes is a pure two-guard. Nairn and Trice are PGs. Forbes is a gunner instead of a lockdown defender, but otherwise that's the exact same thing I'm advocating for Beilein to do if a spot opens up.

Watson is there for depth if injury strikes, plus Michigan could play Irvin at the two and use Chatman/Wilson at the four if the backcourt needs to be further bolstered. With limited scholarships to work with, there's only so much you can construct an injury-proof roster; Michigan's actually not in bad shape in that regard.

...is you're then impeding the development of a highly regarded player at the same position. Xavier Simpson is the future at point guard for this team and they want him to get plenty of time next year. If he's stuck behind Walton and Albrecht, it's hurting the team down the road just so the team can have a marginal one-year upgrade at backup point guard (and that's not a slight against Spike, I just think Simpson is very good).

If there's further attrition, I'd rather see Michigan go after a grad transfer shooting guard, preferably one who's a positive on the defensive end. That's far from the sentimental choice, but I think it's the best one for the team.

Complete brain fart on Poole—I've been working through withdrawal from a medication I had to stop taking and it's turned me into a temporary zombie, so I'll go ahead and blame that. The overall point still stands; barring injury, Michigan won't need to play a walk-on in the guard rotation, and with Simpson's ability to make an instant impact I'm still more worried about the center position.

...when a defender is beat off the dribble at the top of the key, especially on a high screen, the help defense usually comes from the corner. Those shots aren't only shorter; attempts from the corner tend to be more open because of the way they're created.

...in another post, but here's the short version: while he improved, his defense is still quite bad, he continues to have trouble finishing contested shots, and as Wagner bulks up and cuts down on fouls there will be less and less reason to play Donnal over him. I'd love to be more bullish on him but sometimes you have to look past the numbers; it was very apparent who Michigan's best big man was at the end of the season and it wasn't Donnal.

There are also the statistics in the entire rest of the post, which used that as a jumping-off point. Here's another one: in the first matchup against Saturday's very good opponent, Purdue, he went 8/11 on two-pointers. This was far from a one-game fluke against a bad team.

I understand the pessimism surrounding the basketball team right now, but lazy, knee-jerk comments like this aren't helping anything.

...confuses me a bit, too. Robinson is more inclined to take someone off the dribble, especially in recent games. Dawkins finishes at a higher percentage but that's in large part because his two-point opportunities are usually created by someone else. According to hoop-math, 83% of Dawkins' makes at the rim are assisted. For Robinson, that figure is only 57%.

1. Rockford is a really good program that tends to dominate their division opponents.

2. Aggressive fourth-down strategy tends to be the norm in high school and coaches tend to stick with their ways.

3. It's not just about having a good kicker. You need a reliable long-snapper and holder, too. The former can be especially tough to find at the high school level, and unless you have a dedicated long-snapper, you're taking practice time away from working at positions that are going to be on the field a whole lot more.

At no point did I say this team shouldn't shoot a high number of threes—I've maintained quite the opposite all season (and all of Beilein's tenure), in fact. It's hard to dispute, however, that when Michigan doesn't make many threes, they tend to find themselves in trouble—they got crushed in similar performances against UConn and SMU. The whole theme of the post is that they've now reached the point where they're able to generate consistent offense even when the outside shots aren't falling—which is, I believe, your second point above.

If you're going to criticize for lazy writing, you might want to be more careful in your reading.

By my understanding the 3 pm time was never official—that came from someone not affiliated with ESPN—so I wouldn't read too much into the perceived time change. Still would be feeling quite optimistic about the announcement.

But if you look back at the Purdue game, Walton gets blown by without offering much resistance to his man time and again. I don't have an explanation for it; he's just having a hard time staying in front of people, and that tends to set off chaos with rotations among the other defenders, too.

...with some of the names on that list, but Pruitt would be a home run hire as a recruiter—I'd say he'd even be an upgrade over Durkin, and that's saying something. Lance Anderson was Stanford's recruiting coordinator from 2007-11, when they did quite well on the trail, and David Long mentioned he'd love for Anderson to wind up at Michigan (quote in the post); I'd assume that would be a solid recruiting hire, as well.

Regardless of that, I'd be pretty surprised if Durkin's departure has much of an impact on the recruitment of Walker, anyway. Not on the same side of the ball and Walker's primary recruiter is Wheatley.